The Nazi Hunters

The Nazi Hunters is the incredible, hitherto untold story of the most secret chapter in the SAS' history. Officially, the world's most elite special forces unit was dissolved at the end of the Second World War and not reactivated until the 1950s. Among their last actions was a disastrous commando raid into occupied France in 1944, which ended in the capture, torture and execution of 31 soldiers.

The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939 - 1945

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Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich

Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the 20th century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany.

Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682

The Golden Age of the Spanish Empire would establish five centuries of Western supremacy across the globe and usher in an era of transatlantic exploration that eventually gave rise to the modern world. It was a time of discovery and adventure, of great political and social change - it was a time when Spain learned to rule the world.

Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz

Hanns Alexander was the son of a wealthy German family who fled Berlin for London in the 1930s. Rudolf Höss was a farmer and soldier who became Kommandant of Auschwitz and oversaw the deaths of over a million people. In the aftermath of World War II, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen.

East West Street

When human rights lawyer Philippe Sands received an invitation to deliver a lecture in the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv, he began to uncover a series of extraordinary historical coincidences. It set him on a quest that would take him halfway around the world in an exploration of the origins of international law and the pursuit of his own secret family history, beginning and ending with the last day of the Nuremberg Trials.

The Nazi Conscience

The Nazi conscience is not an oxymoron. In fact, the perpetrators of genocide had a powerful sense of right and wrong, based on civic values that exalted the moral righteousness of the ethnic community and denounced outsiders. Claudia Koonz's latest work reveals how racial popularizers developed the infrastructure and rationale for genocide during the so-called normal years before World War II.

Deathride: Hitler vs. Stalin: The Eastern Front, 1941-1945

John Mosier presents a revisionist retelling of the war on the Eastern Front. The conventional wisdom is that Hitler was mad to think he could defeat the USSR, because of its vast size and population, and that the Battle of Stalingrad marked the turning point of the war. Neither statement is accurate, says Mosier; Hitler came very close to winning outright.

They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper

A book like no other - the tale of a gripping quest to discover the identity of history's most notorious murderer and a literary high-wire act from the legendary writer and director of Withnail and I. For over a hundred years, the mystery of Jack the Ripper has been a source of unparalleled fascination and horror, spawning an army of obsessive theorists and endless volumes purporting finally to reveal the identity of the brutal murderer who terrorised Victorian England.

Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939

For all the literature about Adolf Hitler, there have been just four seminal biographies; this is the fifth, a landmark work that sheds important new light on Hitler himself. Drawing on previously unseen papers and a wealth of recent scholarly research, Volker Ullrich reveals the man behind the public persona, from Hitler's childhood, to his failures as a young man in Vienna, to his experiences during the First World War, to his rise as a far-right party leader.

The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945

This Pulitzer Prize-winning history of World War II chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Told from the Japanese perspective, The Rising Sun is, in the author's words, "a factual saga of people caught up in the flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, told as it happened - muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox."

Gulag: A History

The Gulag - a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners - was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost.

Panzer Commander: The Memoirs of Colonel Hans von Luck

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Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia

The Russian decision to mobilize in July 1914 may have been the single most catastrophic choice of the modern era. Some articulate, thoughtful figures around the tsar understood Russia's fragility, yet they were shouted down by those who were convinced that despite Germany's patent military superiority, Russian greatness required decisive action.

Hunting Evil

At the end of the Second World War, some of the highest ranking Nazis escaped from justice, Aided and abetted by the Vatican, they travelled down secret 'rat lines' and were taken in by shady Argentine secret agents. Vengeful Holocaust survivors and inept politicains attempted to bring them to justice and there were daring plots to kidnap or assassinate the fugititives.

Soldat: Reflections of a German Solider, 1936-1949

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The Last 100 Days: The Tumultuous and Controversial Story of the Final Days of World War II in Europe

A dramatic countdown of the final months of World War II in Europe, The Last 100 Days brings to life the waning power and the ultimate submission of the Third Reich. To reconstruct the tumultuous hundred days between Yalta and the fall of Berlin, John Toland traveled more than 100,000 miles in twenty-one countries and interviewed more than six hundred people - from Hitler's personal chauffeur to Generals von Manteuffel, Wenck, and Heinrici.

The End: Hitler's Germany, 1944-45

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The War in the West - A New History: Volume 1: Germany Ascendant 1939-1941

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The Battle for Spain

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Where the Iron Crosses Grow: The Crimea 1941-44

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The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich

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Das Reich

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Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941

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Publisher's Summary

Who were the Gestapo officers? Were they merely banal paper shufflers, or were they recognizably evil? Were they motivated by an eliminationist anti-Semitism? Did the average German know about the mass murder of Jews and other undesirables while they were happening? Exactly how was Nazi terror applied in the daily lives of ordinary Jews and Germans? Eric A. Johnson answers these questions as he explores the roles of the individual and of society in making terror work.

Based on years of research in Gestapo archives as well as extensive interviews with perpetrators and victims, Nazi Terror settles many nagging questions about who, exactly, was responsible for what, who knew what, and when they knew it. It is the most fine-grained portrait we may ever have of the mechanism of terror in a dictatorship.

Destined to become the classic study of terror in the Nazi dictatorship, and the benchmark for the next generation of Nazi and Holocaust scholarship, Nazi Terror tackles the central aspect of the Nazi dictatorship head on by focusing on the roles of the individual and of society in making terror work.

What the Critics Say

"The great virtue of Nazi Terror...is the high degree of levelheadedness and common sense, backed by painstaking research, it brings to questions that unfailingly provoke agitated debate." (New York Times Book Review)

Would you try another book written by Eric A. Johnson or narrated by Edward Lewis?

No, this is the second book ruined by the runaway staccato narration by Edward Lewis,(King Of The Jews, the other book). Is he trying to beat some speed record in narration?This is such an informative book to be absorbed slowly and thought about in depth but for the second time I have had to give up because of the irritating, grating narration which totally destroys concentration.

I downloaded this book believing that I would learn something new not covered in other similar titles, but alas it was not meant to be. The way the book is laid out is boring and extremely long winded. The narrator does a good job with the text and delivers the audio beautifully therefore I've awarded the book two stars out of five, but for the book itself as it was so dull I give this one a zero out of five. Nothing new here, its just a plain old history book certainly not worthy of the price. Very disappointed.

The narrator reads too quickly and his delivery is in an awkward high speed monotone without proper sentence pacing. The writing is also questionable, for example, content about Gestapo agents comes out like someone reading the agents' day planner, and quite boring. I would refer an interested listener to William L. Shirer's 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' for a more comprehensive, more engaging, and better referenced book on the subject.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

GEORGE

Waverly, OH, United States

22/08/12

Overall

Performance

Story

"Answered Some Questions For Me"

I first learned about the terrible crimes committed by the Nazis when the story of the of the death camps was shown on broadcast television in the late 1950s. I could not then, and still do not understand how the so many people stood around and let this happen, much less assist in the exterminitation of the Jewish and Polish people. Ths book provided some insight and answered many of my quations.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Anthony

Lincoln Park, MI, United States

11/05/12

Overall

Performance

Story

"Annoying narration and a tedious writing style"

What disappointed you about Nazi Terror?

The first hour of the book is excruciating. The topic for this section is how this researcher performed his research and a seemingly endless recitation of other author's works and the conclusions the other authors reached. This book is an academic exercise, not an effort to engage the listener in the narrative. Coupled with the author's tedious style, the narrator has a fast paced monotone that had me fighting to stop until I finally became able to tolerate it enough to get through the book.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

David

Mountlake Terrace, WA, United States

07/04/11

Overall

"Amazing"

The book was great; Johnson incorporates careful research on historical archives in Germany into his work and convincingly overthrows many myths about the interaction between the German people during the second world war and the Gestapo.

The narrator is slightly faster than normal but still slower than a normal person talking. He did a fine job.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Luc

Hazelwood, MO, United States

24/03/11

Overall

"Love the content but narrator is way too fast"

I am trying very hard to enjoy this as the subject matter is so intruiging, and the writing is good. My challenge is how 'fast' the narrator speaks. I am seriously looking for a way to slow down the audio over all, otherwise I feel like someone is speed reading and audio books are not so.

See John Lee. If he read this, I would be in bliss. Or if the current gentleman just slowed down.

Sincerely, Not so Speedy I plead thee

4 of 5 people found this review helpful

One Size Fits None

Rural New Jersey

09/04/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"History By The Numbers"

As to form: the performance of the book is awful. The narrator pauses at the end of each sentence for so long that I sped up the replay to 1.5x, which raised his voice to an amusing pitch but at least kept the story moving. Now as to substance...

You know it's may be a tough go when an author spends an entire foreward thanking his research assistants...every last one of them in all countries...his family...his dogs (OK no dogs). It lasted for probably 15 minutes, based on how close I'd gotten to work while listening. This is when you say to yourself, strap me in, it's gonna get wild.

Or not.

The book itself is just dry. Numbers, numbers, numbers. 1933, 4 denunciations, 2 by strangers; 1935, 3 denunciations, one by a stranger, and on and on (and on). The book becomes very hard to follow. It's a shame. Johnson has done a lot of meticulous, focused research, primarily in Gestapo records for a prominent city, a smaller city, a small town. He's obviously spent years at it, done commendable scholarship and compiled quite a record. You can't really quarrel with the structure of his work. It's thematic. The problem for me is that it's driven not by stories but by tables, which are read out loud periodically. It reminds me of a course I had in grad school where the professor kept trying to tell the story of the Civil War by reciting statistics about the production of pig iron. Historians who recite numbers are only doing part of the job. They're why people hate history. A historian has to tell a story. These were real people with real lives. They drank coffee, they rode the S-bahn, they didn't want to go in on Mondays, they were terrified someone would hear them listening to the BBC. Too much of this book - for me - was letting the numbers speak. The individual stories told were not of much interest.

The exception is at the end of the first part, where he discusses clergy who were persecuted by the Nazis. He glosses over Niemoller and Bonhoeffer, which is refreshing, to tell the story of a pair of Catholic priests. One rebels by attacking the Nazis from the pulpit, and stands up to the Gestapo in such an admirable way it seems even the Nazis had to recognize it. He gets transferred by the Church, and when he keeps talking, the Church packs him off to Chile, and when he still keeps talking, they send him off to some place so far out there in Chile that I'm not sure they've got running water and a printing press so he can keep making trouble. A hero.

The second priest is turned in by the Church for molesting young boys, in a high profile case. The story is told in gut turning detail, which is in the records because the Gestapo were thorough and painstaking with any investigation involving sex, such as between Jewish men and German women. He receives what Johnson describes as "comparatively light sentences" despite incontrovertible evidence from several victims, and eventually ends up in Dachau. Johnson questions whether the Church "did all it could to ease [the] plight" of both men. In the case of Father G, the sex offender, when his behavior is uncovered the Church first sends him off to another post. The second time they notify the Gestapo. Johnson asks, "could [the Church] not have found another solution?" Are you kidding? Noting the priest's eventual death in Dachau, Johnson notes, "after six years of misery, his ordeal was over."

Huh?????

This guy was a child molester. "Misery" and "ordeal"??? After molesting children? I'm not suggesting in the remote that Johnson doesn't think the guy is a despicable pervert, but when did German history suddenly run out of sympathetic victims with heartbreaking stories, so that a historian had to rely on this criminal? He wasn't a consenting adult doing with other consenting adults what is nobody's business but theirs. Hate to wear out the phrase, he was a child molester. Father G is not a case of what Johnson labels persecution, but prosecution - the first example I've ever heard of where Nazi justice was actually justice.

Note I'm only reviewing part one - I'm not bothering with part two.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Dave

FONTANA, CA, United States

09/12/14

Overall

Performance

Story

"Waste of a credit"

What disappointed you about Nazi Terror?

the first 1.5 hours is the author giving the history of how he wrote the book.......then the next hour is telling you what's in the book.........by this time you'll just want to turn it off

What was most disappointing about Eric A. Johnson’s story?

The narration is really bad, and I do mean bad....extremely mono toned

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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